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Keep HDGiants Alive! Put $20 into Your Account (UPDATE: Hold that Thought)

Help save one of the industry's greatest assets; open an account today


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HDGiants pioneered high-bit-rate digital audio downloads.

It is the only company one of the few companies out there that dishes high-quality music for your clients.

More importantly, the company (formerly known as MusicGiants) is the only content download company that caters to the custom channel.

Integrators rave about HDGiants, so put your money where your mouth is. Set up an account today, or add $20 to your existing account. Then comment below to let us know what you plan to download from the site!

HDGiants declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 18, and hopes to emerge this summer, according to founder Scott Bahneman.

UPDATE: While he greatly appreciates the gesture, Bahneman now tells us that HDGiants is holding off on accepting new business. He says to hang tight and that hopefully the issues will be resolved in the next few months.

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Article Topics

News · Digital Media · All topics

About the Author

Julie Jacobson, Editor-at-large, CE Pro
Julie Jacobson is co-founder of EH Publishing and currently spends most of her time writing for CE Pro, mostly in the areas of home automation, networked A/V and the business of home systems integration. She majored in Economics at the University of Michigan, earned an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin, and has never taken a journalism class in her life. Julie is a washed-up Ultimate Frisbee player with the scars to prove it. Follow her on Twitter @juliejacobson.

3 Comments (displayed in order by date/time)

Posted by Jez Hildred  on  06/05  at  06:55 PM

HDGiants were certainly the most visible in offering hi-res music but they are far from “the only company out there that dishes high-quality content for your clients.”

http://www.hdtracks.com/ offers hi-res downloads from a number of labels and http://www.itrax.com/ also has a range of such downloads. I’m also aware of specialist labels like Linn Music offering ‘studio master’ resolution downloads.

Posted by Julie Jacobson  on  06/05  at  07:14 PM

Jez, you are absolutely right and I’m not quite sure where that faux pas came from. Those companies (and others) do indeed offer HD audio downloads and I will revise my copy.

Posted by Brian W.  on  06/07  at  01:01 PM

Yes, I’ve been trying for weeks to add more money to my MusicGiants account, but it won’t allow you to.  I have a track that’s been in my shopping cart for three weeks, but I can’t purchase it.

I do hope MusicGiants can emerge from bankruptcy.  I LOVED them.  I’ve purchased over 200 tracks from them since early 2006.  But one of their big problems, as one article said, was focusing too much on “affluent” customers.

That and almost zero advertising budget.  I wrote several emails to Katherine Ryan lamenting the fact that, although I frequent audiophile bulletin boards such as SteveHoffman.tv, almost NO ONE had heard of MusicGiants.  On several occasions, someone would start at thread entitled something like, “Is there any place to buy lossless downloads?”  This was after MusicGiants had been in existence several years.

I also think that the whole “minimum $20 account balance” thing really put people off.  If they felt they had to do that, they could have at least lowered it to $5.00, like Zune.

The most frequent complaint I heard from potential customers, though, when I tried to sell them on MusicGiants, was regarding the DRM.  “I am not buying a download if it’s DRM’d,” they’d say.

My recommendations to Scott, if he does succed in emerging from Chapter 11, are these (perhaps you could forward them to him, Julie):

1. Sell both lossless and MP3s, as HDTracks very wisely does.
2. Either lower the minimum account balance to $5.00, or simply charge per song.
3. Try to get the record companies to agree to let you go DRM-free, perhaps selling files in FLAC format.
4. Spend more money on advertising, and by all means, advertise it as a “CD burn on demand” service.  Most people can’t afford big hard drives to play their music.  I think pointing out that you can burn true CD-quality discs yourself would be a big selling point, and something that really was not emphasized before.

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